Social worker team striving to help DCSD students thrive
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
The goal of K-12 education may seem straightforward: prepare students for their futures. However, the obstacles to meeting that goal can be great, ranging from homelessness to individual learning challenges. That is where the social workers in the Darlington County School District come in.
DCSD’s Lead Social Worker, Lisa Fagan, said that schools today must be prepared to meet more than just a child’s educational needs.
“You really have to treat the whole child,” Fagan said. “You have to look at everything going on with them to see what they need. If a child is falling asleep in class, it may not be that they are being bad. What is going on at home that they are sleeping at school? If a student doesn’t have food or they don’t have a mattress to sleep on at night, how are they going to be successful in school.”
Fagan said that she pursued a degree in social work after a brief consideration of following in her father’s footsteps and entering politics. She said that she liked working with children but knew that she didn’t want to teach.
“My mother worked with DSS for thirty-years,” Fagan said. “And sometimes she would take me on visits with her. That was my introduction to social work.”
After working with the Florence County Disabilities and Special Needs Board, someone suggested that Fagan look at applying to be a social worker with the school district.
“I was surprised because I didn’t even think about schools having social workers,” Fagan said. “When I came on, there was only three for the entire district. There was one for Darlington and Society Hill, one for Hartsville and then one part-time for Lamar.”
Now, a ten-person team covers all of Darlington County’s public school children, with each team member typically serving two schools.
“We serve as a liaison between the school, the community and our families,” Fagan said. “We connect them to the agencies that can help them, whether that is something like Carolina Kids, to get weekend food bags, or an outside agency for counseling.”
With over ten thousand students in the district, Fagan said that the needs are wide-ranging.
“Sometimes parents don’t understand how to get what they need,” Fagan said. “One family I work with, the (guardian) can’t read, so even if we send home paperwork they can’t get the information that they need. If a child has Medicaid and the person taking care of them doesn’t understand that the paper says if this is not returned by the deadline that that child will be dropped from Medicaid that is an issue. We can take that person where they need to go, help them fill out the paperwork and make sure that that child’s needs are met.”
One new challenge that Fagan said social workers are encountering is social media and its impact on the mental health of a student.
“Students will tell us that someone said something on Facebook about them,” Fagan said. “One student said that they wanted to hurt themselves. When they were asked why they wanted to do that, they said it was because no one liked them. When we talk about mental health, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has a mental illness; sometimes students need counseling to talk about what is going on (in their life).”
With all of the difficult situations faced daily, it can be hard to not bring work home, Fagan said, because even with all of their resources not every situation can be permanently fixed.
“It is hard to know that sometimes all you can do it put a Band-Aid on it,” Fagan said. “The way I have to look at it is if I was able to help even one person, that is one more person than last week who got help. This is a very rewarding job and the positives outweigh the negatives. We have a really great team here.”